You know that little crowd-sourcing project of LEGO's, LEGO CUUSOO, where you can vote on the fan submitted creations to hopefully see some of them turn into a real set? Well, the LEGO Minecraft idea has reached the 10,000 vote threshold to be turned into a real set. The official press release below, more pictures on the Minecraft page:

BILLUND, Denmark – A project backed by Minecraft developer Mojang has become the first user-sponsored project to reach the 10,000 vote threshold on the new global version of LEGO® CUUSOO, opening the way for a LEGO set featuring Minecraft to become a reality.

It took the project only 48 hours to gather votes from 10,000 fans of the project from around the world.

“We’re really excited to see the fantastic enthusiasm of the Minecraft community. This is what LEGO CUUSOO is all about, connecting people’s passion to the LEGO brick,” says Paal Smith-Meyer, Head of the LEGO New Business Group. “It is still too early to say whether a Minecraft play set will become a LEGO product as it still needs to go through a review and approval process to ensure it meets our usual LEGO standards, but it is certainly a lot closer.”

A go/no-go decision should be reached within the next few weeks. Assuming it is given a “go,” then development on any new sets will begin. During this time, LEGO model designers refine the product, while packaging, instructions, and marketing are developed ready for a production run. This will take several months.

LEGO CUUSOO is an idea collection system that asks the Danish toy manufacturers’ consumers to submit and vote for their favourite ideas for new LEGO products. It can be found at http://lego.cuusoo.com . The site is currently in "open beta" and has been well received by fans and niche interest groups eager to see their ideas become official LEGO products.

CUUSOO, which means 'imagination' or sometimes ‘wish’ in Japanese, has been developed with CUUSOO SYSTEM, a subsidiary of Japan-based Elephant Design that has worked with open innovation and crowd sourcing for more than 10 years.

The LEGO Group has worked with CUUSOO since 2008 on a Japanese site that has attracted hundreds of ideas and seen thousands of votes cast by a 35,000-strong community. Now the time has come to test the concept internationally.

The first Japanese product, the Shinkai 6500 submersible, went on sale in Japan in February 2011. The next Japanese LEGO CUUSOO model will be the Hayabusa unmanned spacecraft launched in the first quarter of next year.

It took the Shinkai 6500, 420 days to reach 1,000 votes in Japan. Hayabusa took 57 days to 1,000. With the launch of the LEGO CUUSOO worldwide site the threshold was raised to 10,000 to reflect the larger audience.

On LEGO CUUSOO, ideas that are supported by enough votes will be examined by a LEGO jury that will check that the models meet LEGO standards of safety and playability and support the LEGO brand. Consumers who have their ideas chosen for production will earn 1% of the total net sales of the product.

In the case of the Minecraft project, Mojang and the collaborators have offered the 1% CUUSOO royalty to a charity of Mojang's choice.

I hope it ends up closer to this:rather than the main image used, because that just looks like a creator bucket of 2x2 bricks in earth tones. Not that a creator bucket of earth tones is a bad idea, but for the Cuusoo project it would be wildly overpriced. Better to turn it into something that really looks like the game.

Also, good lord, it took them under two days to gather the 10,000 votes! I hope they don't decide that lowered cap is still too low, because then it will be impossible for regular suggestions to gain the support needed.

I have never heard of minecraft or cuusoo before today. At first i thought it might be related to the starcraft/warcraft franchises, but looks simply like a terrain builder? Don't they have something like that in every Sims game and RPG maker? And Cuusoo being Japanese, i hope it's never confused with kuso which is the equvalent swear of saying "fecal matter!"

Maybe I'm the only one confused. I've never played Minecraft, but have seen demos. As I understand, you basically build whatever you want using large blocks and survive. How does that translate into a set a non-minecraft fanatic and/or kid would purchase? What's the appeal?

I'm pretty sure there's very little to absolutely no appeal to anyone not into Minecraft. The trick here is there are gobs of people who are into it, as evident from the flood that signed up for the Cuusoo beta program and said they would buy a Minecraft based Lego set even though they don't know what the set will be or what the price will be. If this gets approved I expect it to do poorly. Unless it's a very limited production run. Then it will easily sell out and prices will skyrocket in the aftermarket.

As far as the draw of Minecraft, from my understanding is it's a sandbox game where you have to work with what you find rather than just having everything available to you in infinite quantities. You're dropped onto an island and have to mine for materials you want to use and craft the tools from what you get. The terrain and various ore veins are not set locations and the maps are generated rather than predefined, so it's a big exploration slash scavenger hunt. Also, there are monsters that kill you if you don't hide at night. Anyone who's played feel free to elaborate on the game and correct me if I'm inadvertently making things up. I haven't played it myself. I know a massive time-sink when I read about it. I have enough habits that make me late for work all the time and I don't need this one.

For all those that are asking what Minecraft is, I'll put it as simply as possible.

It is to the game genre as Lego is to toys. You can do whatever you want, in an infinite world of blocks. You can build, mine, craft, enchant, brew, fight, explore, complete the achievements, join with your friends, create circuits, mechanisms, and pixel art. And that is just some of the things you can do. And yes Don Solo, it IS a time sucker, but a fun one.

ok i've looked into minecraft a little bit and played the free (outdated) version and i suppose i would play it if i was really really really bored. Cuusoo on the other hand looks totally awesome. I wonder if they accept digital renders on that site? I want to post all my feudal japanese buildings and see if any of them get votes! Cuusoo reminds me of a larger scale version of LDD, except you get a limited production run of whatever is created (if the vote is high enough) instead of one single unit.

Minecraft has two main game modes: Survival and Creative. Survival mode is where you have to collect all of your resources, and thus are somewhat limited in what you can do. You also have to fight monsters and kill animals for food. In Creative mode, you have unlimited resources, so you can easily build pretty much whatever you want to. You also can't die in it.

Yeah, I didn't know what Minecraft was either until CUUSOO...or maybe from Flickr when the end of LEGO Universe announcement had folks mentioning it as a possible reason for LU's lack of popularity. Either way, I have no personal connection to it, BUT I do think it's really cool that CUUSOO makes this whole thing possible. It's a smart marketing tool...a way to see what people want and to develop things with a built-in audience just waiting to buy whatever you make. Of course, it remains to be seen if all 10,000 people will buy the set (or if it will be made at all actually, if I'm reading that right), but the potential is there. I'm intrigued by what is essentially LEGO's proprietary version of "crowdfunding"...well, you know what I mean. And I agree that Solo's posted pic is MUCH better. Honestly, the pic that came with the press release looked so uninspired, but hey, it's the equivalent of a quick sketch to communicate an idea.

I don't know why, but I have this feeling that many of those people voting for this are going to be disappointed in the eventual result. I guess my intuition is that people might have been thinking, "I like Minecraft, and it seems like you could use LEGO to play it in real life. That would be COOL!" not giving much thought to what a Minecraft LEGO set would likely comprise, and how much it would likely cost if it were to do anything CLOSE to letting you recreate the game in any meaningful way.

I may be totally off base. It is entirely possible that all those people honestly just REALLY want a smallish Minecraft-style vignette (which seems the likely result). But my gut tells me many of the supporters will be underwhelmed by the end result.

The two products are too similar to go together. It'll just be a bunch of normal pieces put into bland designs and figures. That and it's a line of sets for such a niche market. Obviously, other lines are for niche markets too, but they tend to be much bigger markets. And those licenses offer unique designs and parts that may lead people outside their market to buy them. But, Minecraft is just going to be blocks.

I love the look of some of these ideas though, but I think they should be limited to MOCs. I doubt any actual sets would look nice enough to make me want to buy them.

Mister Ed, i too have felt those same stirrings in the Force. There seems to be very little chance that whatever TLG comes up with, it'll satisfy the majority. I see expense as the major hurdle. Just because Lego *can* release parts at the golden ratio doesn't mean they will. Not if they want a nice profit. Especially for something as limited as this. Also note that 10,000 votes *doesn't* guarantee a build, just that TLG will consider the possibility of making it after discussions.